I kept flying on a path towards the imperial palace for the space of another breath. I wanted to make absolutely certain she was turning everything away.

The fighters were still swarming all over the city, but the bombers were going back to where they came from. They were moving there pretty damn quick.

"I know you're out there, Bill Stewart," the empress said over the line, and then suddenly there was a fuzzing in front of me and she appeared in my heads-up display.

Which was a bit of a trip. The empress's face right in front of me in a virtual representation of what a cockpit training pod would look like. I wanted to glance over to Arvie, but I didn't dare. I didn't want to give away what was going on here. I didn't want her to realize this wasn't the real world, and as I looked around I also noticed my surroundings were made up to look like the cockpit in one of the ships.

"You think you're clever, don't you?" she said. "You think this is going to do anything but delay the destruction?"

"I never thought it was going to do anything but delay the destruction," I said, "And maybe remind you that other people are capable of delivering a little destruction to you."

Her eyes narrowed. "This could be perceived as a violation of the Grand Gathering terms."

Suddenly, Arvie was there, whispering in my head.

"Her attacking you in the first place is a violation of the Grand Gathering terms."

"You attacking me in the first place is a violation of the Grand Gathering terms," I repeated.

"Oh, so you're a livisk lawyer now?" she said.

"I know that the livisk love nothing more than exploiting a good rule," I said, grinning at her. "And I know we're on a public channel again, so there are probably a lot of people listening in on this and wondering if you have any honor at all. Especially after you nuked a fortress building that had a bunch of children in it."

Arvie and Varis both indicated that the average livisk wasn't going to care all that much about a building with a bunch of children in it getting nuked. That was the kind of callous thing that happened in warfare between the nobility on the regular on this planet. Especially in Imperial Seat. So much so that it was just a fact of life.

But I was betting on that not actually being the case. I knew there were a lot more people who were listening in on this conversation than the nobility, and I was talking to them.

"I want you to know I'm going to blow you out of the sky, Bill Stewart," she said.

"You can just call me Bill," I said, grinning at her. "I figure we've tried to kill each other often enough that we should be on a first name basis."

Her teeth started grinding together, and then she turned and made a gesture.

"Fire everything we have at every one of those ships, and do it when I'm done talking."

"Are you ever truly done talking?" I asked.

"I'm never going to be done chasing down everybody who has any connection to you, Bill Stewart. Everybody in your crew who I don't kill with this explosion. Everybody who ever had any connection to you in Varis's tower. I'm going to make sure the torture for her is long and slow. I wish I could do the same for you, but I want to make sure I actually kill you."

"You do seem to be having trouble with that," I said, nodding at her with what I hoped was a suitably serious expression.

She let out a growl.

"I don't know how you keep escaping. I don't know how you wound up in one of these fighters when you should be down in that hole being held captive, or how you're managing to pilot all of them, but I am going to get my answers. I'm going to have my people rip that Combat Intelligence apart line of code by line of code. But you're not going to be around to see it, because I've learned enough from your Earth entertainments to know it's a good idea to simply shoot the person attacking rather than relying on some elaborate scheme."

"So you admit you're the bad guy," I said.

"What are you talking about?" she said.

"Well, you're talking about Earth entertainment. I'm flattered you're brushing up on that in an attempt to understand me, Your Worship. The thing is, the empire that needs to shoot the person fighting them is usually the evil empire attacking the hero."

"Is there a point to this?" she said.

"Well, you're calling me the hero in this scenario. I'm flattered," I said.

"Would somebody just shoot him already?" she said.

The display in front of me winked out of existence. I moved to a second craft just in time to see a bunch of fire from the planet down below rising up and hitting it. The engine systems went out, and then the whole thing exploded.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I moved to the third ship. I was immediately faced with a bunch of imperial fighters in a furball all around me. I gritted my teeth as I pulled up and shot for the sky.

I thought about doing the fold missile trick again. It was dangerous the last time I pulled it. Activating a fold drive in a gravity well could have unexpected results, and the more you did it the more it ripped at spacetime and the more expected those unexpected results became.

I'd been desperate in more ways than one the last time I did it. If I was being honest I'd probably been reckless to the point of being borderline suicidal back then thanks to the whole captive thing being shiny and new.

But I wanted to live now. More than that? I did want to try and minimize civilian casualties, for all that I was also willing to do what needed to be done to save my people.

"Arvie, I need you to do some quick calculations on exactly how much I need to let loose on the matter-antimatter intermix to create an explosion that will take out the fighters all around us without creating an explosion that will take out a chunk of the city under us."

"I estimate that if you move to about 7% of containment loss that should do the trick, Bill," Arvie said.

"You're sure that's not going to go into a runaway?"

"There are no guarantees in life, Bill, but that should be close enough to blow up the fighters without causing too much collateral damage."

"Now I'm worrying about collateral damage," I said with a chuckle.

But ideally those people down there would be my people if my plans worked. I couldn't go spending lives unnecessarily. Avoid collateral damage.

I quickly ran through the override using my head to do it. Which made me feel a touch woozy, but it did the trick. One moment I was shooting up towards the sky above. It started to turn black as sky turned to space. I felt lightheaded, like I was blacking out around the edges. Which wasn't something that should've been happening in a starfighter I was flying remotely.

Just as I was about to black out, the feed went out and I was in another ship.

"Looks like it was a successful deployment of the reactor breach," Arvie said. "You took out a large chunk of the fighters swarming around you."

"Excellent," I said.

I was back in one of the ships that was doing a trench run. I felt a small ping and realized the fifth ship had gone down while I was using the last one to take out the rest.

"Arvie, I'm not feeling so hot," I said as the world started to fuzz a little all around me again. "Can you take over on this one?"

"I would be more than happy to, Bill," he said. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I have no idea," I said, letting go of the controls and falling back. Only instead of falling back into the simulator, I found myself falling back into Varis's arms. I took a couple of deep breaths, but the world was still fuzzy and black all around me.

"Bill, are you okay?" Varis asked.

The drone Arvie had occupied appeared in front of me. I was surprised to realize I could feel the drone. I wondered if that was because I was connected via Arvie, or if I was getting some weird mental connection to every bit of livisk technology I came into contact with. But then that connection abruptly shut off.

"I am loath to admit this, but I think Bill might have been correct."

I grinned at him, though the room seemed to fuzz around me again. It felt like I'd gone out for a wee bout of shore leave and hit the bars a little too hard on a station without bothering with a hangover cure the next day.

I took another step, stumbled, and nearly fell forward.

But Varis was right there with an arm around me. She was suddenly in front of me, looking at me with obvious concern.

"Bill, what's wrong?"

"It would appear the neural interface connection has created a bit of a problem for Bill," Arvie said.

"A bit of a problem," I said with a snort. "I feel fine. This is nothing more than a hangover at Tosche Station."

"Tosche Station?" Rachel said, her eyebrows shooting up. "When were you ever there?"

I turned to Varis. "You know they named it after the thing in Star Wars?"

"I'm sure they did, given what I know of you," she said, smiling at me. "They named a lot of stuff after things in Star Wars, didn't they?"

"Not as much as Star Trek. That still pisses off the Mouse. They've been trying to flog that dead horse for, like, 500 years now."

"I'm sure they have, Bill," she said.

There was worry coming through the link. I don't know why she'd be worried.

"Why are you worried about me?" I said. "I'm fine. I managed to distract the empress and get her to call off her bombing run."

Varis frowned. "How exactly did you get the empress to call off a bombing run?"

"I threatened to drop a nuke on the imperial palace," I said with a grin.

That mild concern moving through the link turned to outright concern. Varis's eyes went wide.

"You did what?"

"Hell yeah, Bill," Rachel said, smacking me on the back.

"It's okay," I said, grinning at her and weaving from side to side as we moved through the tunnel. I thought I could see a light up ahead. I wondered if we were almost out of here. "It was only a pretend nuke."

"I see," Varis said, and she sounded like that didn't seem much better than using a real nuke.

"And then when they used some sort of EM sensor bullshit to reveal I didn't actually have any nukes in my payload, I started to override the intermix chamber on my fighter and threatened to blow that up. Which was probably even more terrifying than the nuke threat, now that I think of it. There were probably a few livisk who shit their pants."

"You did what?" Varis said, staring at me and Arvie.

"Hey, she fired on us first. Don't worry, I talked to her about it. Arvie showed me the relevant legal bullshit to point out that she was the one in the wrong."

"You did what?" Varis repeated.

Incredulity mixed with something that seemed almost like amusement in the link. Like she was terrified that I'd been talking to the empress again, but there was also a part of her that enjoyed that I'd been talking to the empress and come out on top again.

"See, there's nothing to worry about," I said. "I took care of everything."

"It is true," Arvie said. "We're having some trouble with the neural interface, and I don't think it would be a good idea for us to continue with that until I can run diagnostics at the tower, but William did manage to distract the empress long enough that we are well outside the danger zone now."

"See what I mean?" I said, grinning. "Everything's going to be fine."

Varis squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Meanwhile, I got a smack upside the back of my head from Rachel.

"Ouch! What in Shatner's girdle was that for?"

"Bill, you know not to do that shit," Rachel said.

"Oh," I said, looking up and watching the tunnel spinning all around me. "Oh, shit. I did it again, didn't I?"

And it was right about that time that the whole world seemed to shake and come to an end all around us. I guess I bought a little bit of time for us, but not too much.

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